While many Linux desktop enthusiasts still have nightmares concerning the early days of PulseAudio, the developers behind this common open-source audio server are planning to do a major 2.0 release before month's end...

Fantastic! I haven't checked on PA for awhile so it was great to see their 2.0 roadmap.
Apparently PA now detects JACK properly.
One of the more interesting blockers left is "need more Orc". Don't we all:) Srsly, that is a library I would like to see being used more pervasively.

03-15-2012, 08:59 PM

MNKyDeth

Thank god for choice!!

At least there are distro's out there like Gentoo where you can remove this parasite piece of software from the compile time options. Either that or LFS or any other source based distro.

I know this piece of software helps a lot of people but anyone with a decent sound card with hardware mixing knows of all the problems pulseaudio produces.

03-15-2012, 09:04 PM

FireBurn

Quote:

Originally Posted by MNKyDeth

At least there are distro's out there like Gentoo where you can remove this parasite piece of software from the compile time options. Either that or LFS or any other source based distro.

I know this piece of software helps a lot of people but anyone with a decent sound card with hardware mixing knows of all the problems pulseaudio produces.

Most of the headaches I have with audio (especially HDMI audio) on Gentoo comes from apps not supporting Pulseaudio ie wine

03-15-2012, 11:13 PM

vertexSymphony

Quote:

Originally Posted by FireBurn

Most of the headaches I have with audio (especially HDMI audio) on Gentoo comes from apps not supporting Pulseaudio ie wine

+1 ... I don't usually use alsa directly, only through PulseAudio or, if I have some special needs, then JACK it is, but never alsa.

Regards.

P.S → Most of the distros allows to get rid of PA? just take out the package and remove the alsa redirect (usually done automatically) and you're done . at least, that was my experience ... in any case we need an abstraction layer to allow portability, PA or JACK that is or something that supports both ... if you don't have any special needs, PA is pretty decent IMHO

03-15-2012, 11:36 PM

schmidtbag

I use alsa directly on all of my computers and always have. I like how light-weight it is, the 1 and only thing I desperately hate about alsa is there is no easy way to configure it. I can copy an .asoundrc config file verbatim for my audio chip and I still can't get something like surround sound working.

On the average laptop or computer using stereo speakers + a mic, alsa is more than sufficient. But when it comes to surround sound or re-routing channels and all that mixing crap, it becomes an inconsistent disaster.

That's where I like PulseAudio. So far, other than movies (which I don't watch often to begin with), I almost never need surround sound on my dekstop linux setup, but if I did I would use PA. PA has some insanely cool features that I never knew you could do with sound cards, but it has its problems. My major gripes with PA is:

1. It's too CPU and RAM consuming, and not enough devices are supported.
2. There are several tools that go with it and its sometimes confusing to know which one does what
3. Some of the tools don't include features I really care about that you can only do in the config files.
4. Sometimes the sound just stops working and the only way to get it to work again is to delete all config files and reinstall them.

If PA can fix these, I'll switch away from alsa.

03-16-2012, 01:16 AM

e8hffff

I just want the OS like Kubuntu or Gnome to allow better, easier, manipulation of virtual streams in PulseAudio. Example make it easy to record an application’s sound rather then that master channel in a recorder. This means the likes of KDE need to officially adopt PulseAudio.

03-16-2012, 02:25 AM

gigaplex

Quote:

Originally Posted by e8hffff

I just want the OS like Kubuntu or Gnome to allow better, easier, manipulation of virtual streams in PulseAudio. Example make it easy to record an application’s sound rather then that master channel in a recorder. This means the likes of KDE need to officially adopt PulseAudio.

KDE already has adopted PulseAudio, the integration is pretty good. I'm not sure about your particular use case, however.

03-16-2012, 02:40 AM

Zajec

Quote:

Originally Posted by FireBurn

Most of the headaches I have with audio (especially HDMI audio) on Gentoo comes from apps not supporting Pulseaudio ie wine

Wine works fine for me starting with 1.3.31 (1.3.30 introduced "DirectSound reimplemented on top of MMDevAPI." and 1.3.31 some seem-to-be-important fixes). Maybe you should try some recent Wine release?